MONTPELIER – There will be no surprises next year, Gov. Peter Shumlin said Saturday as he spoke to a roomful of House Democrats gearing up for the 2014 legislative session.

No surprises, meaning presumably, no proposals to cut tax credits for the poor and no tax on break-open tickets like this past year. Next year will be about some of the usual nagging issues: budget gaps, opiate addiction and getting people ready for jobs. Most of all it will be about keeping the eye on the 2015 prize, Shumlin said. That is figuring out how to create (and pay for) for a universal health care system.

“This is my single goal of what I want to accomplish before Vermonters are finished with me,” Shumlin said.

“Let’s use this year 2014 … to do the homework for 2015,” Shumlin told the caucus. Enacting universal health care in 2015 will be “the hardest lift in legislative history in the state of Vermont. I promise.”

Shumlin was speaking among (more or less) friends, which is to say Democratic legislators did not openly grill him about technical problems with the new health care exchange, as a roomful of Republicans might have done.

But even fellow Democrats in the crowd parsed his every word. Why had he used the word universal but not single-payer when describing his health care goal, asked Rep. Kate Webb, D-Shelburne. She seemed to be asking if he was backing down.

“If ever you hear the rumor, in this building or anywhere else, that your governor is backing down in his commitment to universal, single-payer, publicly funded health care … come find me,” Shumlin responded. “It is not true.”

He cited health care as the reason to avoid making changes to the income tax system next year, so that any changes will be in concert with funding a new health care plan. “Let’s take all the good ideas we have and do a tax package at once,” he said. Lawmakers looking for a more fair tax structure should focus that energy on making a more fair health care system, he said.

He seems to have won over legislative leaders on that one. House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell have backed off their push for income tax changes next year.